TWISTS AND TURNS... 

Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, told fellow senators that opposing reform of the filibuster in the Senate rule book, “It may be the most important thing you ever do.”

What!  

The filibuster is used to block legislation when the minority party doesn’t want to debate a bill unless sixty senators vote to do so.  It was once a tactic used only rarely; and when it did happen, minority members would actually go to the floor of the Senate and talk for hours and hours and hours. A filibuster happened when senators in the minority party calculated logically rather than just emotionally that the American people would be on their side. It was a big, big deal when it happened.  Now it happens all the time.  It has become a tactic used to freeze government and keep it from working.  Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate are failing to recognize that President Obama won the election because a majority of Americans prefer his agenda over the one that they and their candidate presented.  

The current big issue is easy to understand.  A majority of Americans have no problem with a plan to ask super-rich citizens to pay more income tax than they are now paying. The majority of  Americans are empathic, good people who recognize that poverty and privation are mostly not self imposed conditions; and they reject the notion that leaving more money with the already super-wealthy will benefit all people, even the poorest,  in the long run.   Many Americans read history... sometimes.  History shows clearly that the middle economic class grew and poverty shrank when the tax rate on the richest was as much as twice what it is today.   Most Americans are not rich.  Many Americans live with middle incomes in comfortable middle class homes in middle class neighborhoods. Many other hard-working Americans live in fear on modest incomes at the very edge of poverty.   Sadly, many Americans live in abject poverty.  Anybody who cares to learn about just how hungry some children are day after day after day can take a close look at public school programs in the poorest sections of American cities.  Teachers who work there know.  Cafeteria workers who feed children in breakfast, lunch and afternoon food programs in those schools know. Of course, there are dead beat dads and drug and alcohol addicted moms living in poor neighborhoods, but that’s not the issue here.  Those problems must be addressed, but let’s focus on children and adolescents who are struggling to grow up in volitile home environments and chaotic neighborhoods.  Ask teachers about poverty conditions that affect their students, and they will explain why it isn’t the fault of those children that they are poor.  Ask the teacher who has talked with a mother who comes to school conferences with a black eye and bruises about how an abusive father and husband affects children. 

I wonder which Americans Senators McCain, Graham, McConnell, and Representatives Issa, Boehner are seeing and hearing?   Who is advising and supporting members of Congress who are standing stubbornly against any tax increases on any Americans and are insisting that food stamp program and medical care programs are unnecessary “entitlements” that should be cut?  Who... and why?  Clearly they are not listening even to some of those citizens who are very wealthy, Like Warren Buffet, and think the super-rich can pay more in taxes without inhibiting the growth of the economy.  Do they actually believe Fox News and the Rush Limbaugh represent the thinking of the majority of Americans?  Am I being cynical when I guess that the reason some politicians want to let the wealthy keep as much money as possible is that they want cash to flow back to them in the form of support for their reelection campaigns?  Maybe they should think about what happened to the money Karl Rove and the Hunt Brothers’ crowd shoveled into (I was going to say “rat hole,” but changed my mind) failed election campaigns.